The monkey in the forest

Gautama the Buddha's most fundamental message to humanity is that man is asleep.

Man is born asleep. He is not talking about the ordinary sleep; he is talking about a metaphysical sleep, a deep deep unconsciousness within you. You are acting out of that unconsciousness, so whatsoever you do goes wrong. It is impossible to do right with this unconsciousness within you. This unconsciousness perverts all of your efforts, it leads you into wrong directions. It is bound to be so.

Even if a buddha is with you, you will misunderstand him for the mere reason that you are not conscious. If you are really asleep and a buddha is sitting by the side of you, you cannot recognize him, you cannot see him, you cannot feel him. You will go on dreaming in your own way; you will remain confined to your own private world of dreams.

The most private thing in life is your dreaming. When the dreaming disappears you enter into the world of the universal. Then you enter into truth, into God, into nirvana.

But with all your dreams, that is impossible; you are lost in your own dreams. And it is not only one dream within you; millions of them are constantly growing... one is being replaced by another. You think that now you are awake because one dream has left you, but another has taken its place. You can even dream that you are awake. Buddhas go on shouting, but you don't hear.

Jesus says: If you have eyes to see, see. If you have ears to hear, hear. He is not talking with deaf and blind people, he is talking with people like you. He is saying exactly the same thing that Buddha is saying: that you are asleep.

Jesus had been to India, and when Jesus came to India, Buddha was very much alive.

Although he had left his body five hundred years before, the air was still full with his songs. There were still people deeply connected with him; there were still people for whom he was almost a tangible reality.

Buddha had said that "My religion will last for five hundred years." Those years were coming to an end; it was the last phase. The sun was setting, but the sun was still on the horizon.

Jesus must have visited Buddhist schools, monasteries. In Ladakh there is still a hand- written scripture in existence in which Jesus has written about his coming to India, his visit, his experiences, what he had gained here. Christian scriptures are completely silent about his life. He is mentioned once when he is twelve years old and then for eighteen years there is a gap. Then he is mentioned when he is thirty, and then he lives only three years more. Where had he been for eighteen years? The people who were writing the gospels must have been aware of the gap, but they were afraid to say anything about those eighteen years, because he was traveling, moving from one mystery school to another mystery school.

He talked very much the way Buddha talked. He carried a similar message and a similar understanding to his people. He was misunderstood for the simple reason that he had brought something which was not part of Jewish tradition; he had brought something alien. And the most alien thing was that he was telling people, "You are asleep, you are really dead."

Just being born is not enough to be awake. Awakening has to be achieved through arduous effort; otherwise you can pass your whole life wandering in the forest of dreams. And he was aware that the people who were listening to him were not capable of understanding him at all. He was saying one thing and they would understand another. He was aware that there was something that seemed to be hindering the message.

Jesus is sitting at the table with his twelve disciples, eating beef and drinking wine. At a certain point he looks intensely up at his disciples and says, "One of you will betray me.

Judas, Judas, why, why you?"

At this, in a fit of anger, Judas gets up and screams at the disciples, "Why the hell is it that every time he gets drunk he takes it out on me?"

Jesus looks drunk to Judas. Buddha also looks drunk to the people. And in a way, they are drunk - drunk with the divine. They belong to another world. We live in the night, they have seen the dawn. We live in our dreams of achieving this and that, in our ambitions, in our ego trips for power, for money, for prestige. And they live at a totally different point. They live as beings, we live as becomings. We live as desires, as dreams; they are real beings: they have no dreams, no desires. We live in the past or in the future; they live in the present. We live in words, they live in silence. We live in thousands of frustrations, they live in deep peace.

Why do we live in frustrations? How do we manage to live in so many frustrations? We have become experts in creating frustrations although we don't do it intentionally. We don't do anything intentionally; our whole lives are accidental. In sleep, your life is bound to be just accidental, at the mercy of the winds. We are just as straws in the wind or dry leaves in the wind. We don't know who we are, we don't know where we are going, we don't know from where we are coming. We don't know anything about our being - and we know great information about facts, figures which are utterly meaningless.

Unless you know yourself, no knowledge is of any meaning. At the very center of your being there is darkness; no light from the outside can dispel it.

The greatest problem in the world is how to commune your awakening with those who have never tasted it. They are bound to misunderstand. Misunderstanding is almost inevitable.

The color TV was invented in the USA. News of this beautiful new toy arrived up to the kingdom of God. God, being very curious, sent one of his archangels down to the earth to get one.

As God sat in front of his new color TV set with the archangel sitting beside him, he pressed the first button. Immediately, the image of naked, tired, sweating people appeared on the screen. They were working incredibly hard in a Johannesburg diamond mine.

Upon seeing this, God shouted, "Ah Christ, holy shit, what the hell are they doing down there?"

Saint Peter replied, "They are being good and working hard, my Lord, just as you wanted."

"No, no, no, that is not what I meant! They have missed the whole point!" screamed God at the top of his thunderous voice.

Then he pushed another button. The image changed to the glorious Vatican in all its pomp and splendor, with his holiness the pope, dressed in gold. He was surrounded by luxuriously dressed nobles and velvet-cloaked cardinals with massive crowns on their heads.

God turned to Peter, shouting, "And who are they?"

Saint Peter humbly replied, "These are the ones who did not miss the point...."

In fact, everybody misses the point; it is bound to be so. Coming from the peaks of awakening to the dark valleys of sleep one cannot expect that it will be understood rightly.

Hence Buddha insisted, he always emphasized to his disciples, "Before you start trying to understand what I am saying and what I am doing, be silent at least for two years, utterly silent, thinking nothing. When you have attained to stillness, then you will be able to communicate with me. Then if you have any questions you can ask, and then it will be possible for me to pour my heart into your heart."

But it used to happen that whenever somebody would come and would stay for two years in silence, he would never ask anything - because silence is the answer of all the answers. Silence is the answer for all the questions. There would be no need to ask Buddha because in silence he would see the glory, the splendor of Buddha, and it would start permeating his being like a flood, taking away all dust accumulated down the centuries.

The first sutra:

Desire cannot be dropped unless you wake up. Millions of people have tried to drop desiring without waking up. In fact, the very idea of dropping desire was another desire and nothing else. They heard from the buddhas, from the awakened ones, that there is great peace if you drop desire, there is great bliss if desires wither away; that you will attain to eternity, that you will not know any birth, any death anymore, that you will become part of the universal celebration that goes on and on - if you drop desire. Millions became greedy, thinking that by dropping desire they will attain all these joys. Now, this is a new desire taking root in you. The desire for God, the desire for truth, the desire for liberation, the desire for becoming desireless, is still a desire.

You have misunderstood the whole point again. A new greed - religious greed - has taken possession of you.

Millions of people have lived in the monasteries - monks and nuns and all kinds of ascetics - torturing themselves in the hope, in the desire, that this is the way to destroy desires. When all desires are destroyed they are going to attain to heavenly pleasures.

And those pleasures are real pleasures; they are not momentary like the pleasures on this earth, they are eternal. How can you drop desire by creating a new desire, a bigger desire, a far more dangerous desire?

As I see it, the religious people are more in the grip of desire than the nonreligious. The nonreligious is satisfied with small things - a good house, a beautiful wife, children, a little bank balance - small things. But religious people go on condemning these people that they are sinners. And they themselves are saints because they want a bank balance in the other world, and a bank balance which will be inexhaustible!

It is very difficult to drop desire; unless you wake up you cannot drop desire. Desire is a natural phenomenon when you are asleep. Desire is dreaming and nothing else. When you wake up dreams disappear, and when you wake up desires disappear.

Hence it has to be understood: the real point is not to fight with your desires but to fight with your sleep. That is cutting the very root; otherwise you remain the same. You will function out of your unconsciousness and you will go on doing the same; it does not matter what it is.

Three men were riding in a bus on a hot summer day in Israel. One of them was a rabbi, a Jew, another a Greek, and the other a Palestinian.

The bus departed, and a fly flew onto the shoulder of the Greek. He simply slapped it away. The fly then flew over to the rabbi's shoulder and he did the same. The fly then flew over to the Palestinian. The Palestinian immediately grabbed the fly and ate it.

A second fly flew into the bus and exactly the same thing happened: the fly landed on the Greek, the Greek slapped it away over to the Jew, the Jew also slapped it away, and finally it landed on the Palestinian who grabbed it and ate it.

At this point, the Greek and the Jew both looked at the Palestinian in amazement.

Sure enough, a third fly flew into the bus. It flew over to the Greek and was slapped away. It flew over to the rabbi and this time the rabbi grabbed the fly, went over to the Palestinian and asked, "You want to buy a nice fly?"

Rabbi or no rabbi, a Jew is a Jew! If there is some business he is not going to miss it.

You are living in dreams. Your priests, your rabbis, your monks, your nuns, your bishops, your popes, they are all living in the same sleep. Maybe your dreams are a little bit different from each other, but the quality of the dream is the same.

Why do you dream? - because there are so many desires unfulfilled, and to live with unfulfilled desires is painful. In dream you try to fulfill them; in dream you create a false feeling of fulfillment. Hence your dreams show much about you: what your desires are, what you want to become. But if you want to become anything in life, you are asleep.

The man who is awake knows there is nowhere to go, nothing to become. He is already that which he ever can become. Seeing the grandeur of his being, desires wither away on their own accord. You are not even expected to drop them; they drop by themselves, like dry leaves falling from the trees.

IF YOU SLEEP, says Buddha, DESIRE GROWS IN YOU....

Remember: desire grows only when you are asleep, unconscious, unaware, unmeditative. And this is natural. It grows... LIKE A VINE IN THE FOREST. And whatsoever you do in this sleep is going to be wrong, remember. You can become an ascetic, you can fast, you can pray, but your prayers will be wrong.

Hence, Buddha never says pray; he says meditate. What can you pray? You will always pray FOR something; it will be a desire. You can go to the churches and the temples and listen to people's prayers, and you will be surprised: they are always asking and asking.

Their prayers are superficial. They had not gone there to thank God; their prayers are not full of gratitude but full of complaints. They want more and they are ready to pray.

Their prayer is nothing but buttressing: they praise the Lord; they hope that this buttressing will help their prayers to be fulfilled. And behind the prayer there is a desire.

Buddha says: Don't be bothered with prayers, because you are asleep and your prayer is bound to be nothing but a desire. Your asceticism is bound to be nothing but an expression of your desire. Your asceticism is going to be nothing but a deep hedonism.

Hence all religions talk about the joys and the pleasures of heaven and paradise. These are the allurements which keep people going to the temples and to the churches and to the mosques.

Buddha says: Go into silence, because silence creates the right space to wake up. Silence goes to the very center of your being like an arrow and wakes you up. And when you are awake, your whole life is a prayer! And don't go on doing things in your sleep because you can do much more harm. It is better to be ordinary when you are asleep - your harm will be ordinary. Don't try to be extraordinary, don't try to be a saint or a mahatma; your harm will be far bigger.

Contemplate on this maxim of Murphy:

If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.

What else can you do when you are asleep? Try and try and try again; go on trying. But if the fundamental is wrong, whatsoever you do is going to be wrong.

And the problem with desire is this: if you DON'T get it - which is almost inevitable because all your desires are impossible.... You ask for the impossible; it can't happen in the nature of things; hence you feel frustrated when it doesn't happen. And if at all it happens by some miracle, by some accident... if it happens, then, too, it is not going to fulfill you or make you contented because the moment it happens, again your mind starts asking for more; or, by the time it happens you are no longer interested in it.

The soldier boy was unhappy.

"But this is Christmas time," I tried to cheer him up. "Santa Claus and all that!"

"What Santa Claus?" he cried. "Twenty years ago I asked Santa for a soldier suit - now I get it!"

Murphy's maxim: Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disaster in life begins when you get what you want.

Blessed are those who don't get what they want, because at least they can hope. The real disaster happens when you get what you want, because then there is no possibility to hope; then you are stuck with it. And it is YOU who have desired it, who had worked for it. But out of sleep nothing else is possible.

Sleep is our common disease; we are born with this disease. It is so common, that's why we don't think about it at all as a disease; otherwise this is the greatest disease, according to all the awakened ones.

Buddha's suggestion is: Be conscious. Bring more consciousness to your inner being and also to your outer actions. He does not want you to create new desires - holy desires instead of unholy desires. He does not want you to become a saint as against being a sinner. He does not want you to substitute your mundane desires with sacred desires.

He wants you to do something totally different, that is his great contribution to humanity: he wants you to become conscious.

Out of consciousness a radical transformation happens: desires disappear and peace descends - the peace of desirelessness.

Observe what you have been doing: LIKE A MONKEY IN THE FOREST....

Charles Darwin became aware of the phenomenon very late: that man is a descendant of monkeys. And he may not be right, because he thinks that PHYSICALLY man is a descendant of the monkeys. That does not seem to fit the reality: man seems to be essentially different from monkeys as far as the body is concerned.

For millions of years, monkeys have been seeing man standing on two feet and they have not learned the trick yet. You don't see suddenly a monkey walking like a man.

How did it happen in the first place that a few monkeys started walking on two feet and became the ancestors of humanity? It does not seem to be likely.

But all the awakened ones of the world have known that as far as the MIND of man is concerned, it is very like the monkeys; it is not much different. The real monkey is not in your body but in your psychology; it is not physiological, it is psychological.

Your mind is continuously jumping from one tree to another tree. It is constantly restless; it cannot remain restful even for a single moment. It wants to be continuously occupied. And what is the gain?

Buddha says: LIKE A MONKEY IN THE FOREST YOU JUMP FROM TREE TO TREE, NEVER FINDING THE FRUIT - FROM LIFE TO LIFE, NEVER FINDING PEACE.

Peace is the fruit - and the mind has no idea what peace is. It knows only conflict, it knows only war, violence, destruction. It knows only all sorts of perversions, neurosis, psychosis. It knows a deep inner split, but it knows nothing of peace; it has never tasted it, it is absolutely unknown. It is only a word, empty of any meaning. Meaning comes through experience, otherwise all words are empty. God is an empty word to you because you have not experienced it. Peace is an empty word to you because you have not experienced it.

Buddha does not use the word 'bliss'. That was always the case before Buddha: that bliss is the fruit. SAT-CHIT-ANAND - truth, consciousness, bliss - these are the three aspects of the ultimate fulfillment. But Buddha does not talk about bliss for a certain reason. The reason is that the moment you talk about bliss you are bound to be misunderstood. People start thinking about happiness and pleasures - maybe on a higher plane, but their idea of pleasure remains the same, their idea of happiness remains the same. They think of sexual pleasure even in paradise.

There are religions who even allow homosexuality in paradise, because they were born in countries where homosexuality was very much prevalent. And every religion promises you beautiful women in paradise. Who has projected these ideas? Frustrated people, those who have failed here; now they are hoping they will succeed in the other world, on the other shore.

Buddha does not use the word 'bliss' for the simple reason that it can create a misunderstanding. It creates it because you know something about happiness, and you think maybe there is a great difference between bliss and happiness, but happiness gives you some idea of what bliss will be.

Bliss is not happiness. Bliss is more like peace than like happiness. Bliss is neither unhappiness nor happiness; it is peace from that turmoil, that conflict. It is peace, absolute peace, because it is a transcendence of duality. Happiness always lingers with unhappiness; unhappiness is always with its other side, happiness. They are two sides of the same coin. When the whole coin drops from your hand you are neither happy nor unhappy.

It is because of this that Buddha never had a great appeal to the Indian masses. Who wants peace? Everybody wants happiness - and everybody knows that happiness is followed by unhappiness, as day is followed by night, as death is followed by birth, birth is followed by death. It is a vicious circle: if you are happy, you can be certain that soon you will be unhappy; if you are unhappy, you can be certain that soon you will be happy again.

Seeing this game of happiness and unhappiness, the watcher, the meditator becomes unidentified with both. When happiness comes he knows that unhappiness will be coming, so why get excited? When unhappiness comes he is not at all disturbed because he knows happiness will be coming just around the corner, so why become disturbed?

He is neither excited by happiness nor disturbed by unhappiness. This is peace. He remains the same, in a deep equilibrium; his silence is undisturbed. Day comes and goes, night comes and goes, everything comes and goes. He remains a witness, unconcerned, cool. That coolness, that unconcernedness is peace.

But nobody wants peace. People who are asleep cannot want peace. Hence Buddha, although while he was alive thousands of people were transformed by him, as had never happened before.... Many more people became enlightened around him than around anybody else in the whole history. Still, his religion disappeared from India; it did not appeal to the masses. That carrot was not there hanging in front of you: bliss.

He was talking of peace.

Peace seems to be very unalluring; it does not ring bells in your heart. Peace, just peace?

So much effort for meditation and so much effort for waking up, and the result is only peace? You want something more exciting, more sensational. You want ecstasy, not peace. Your sleep creates the dream of bliss, of ecstasy, of great joys, eternal joys.

But Buddha's choice of the word is very right, absolutely right. He never moves from the inner truth, he goes on insisting on it. Whether it appeals to you or not, he is not much concerned about that. He is not at all going to compromise with you and your desires and your sleep.

Of course, when Buddha died, the scholars started interpreting his peace as bliss - another name, they said, for bliss. But from India it disappeared, the religion disappeared. The scholars and the pundits learned it a little late. When the religion had disappeared from India, then they thought over it, and why it had happened. And this was the cause: Buddha was talking about peace, about nirvana. Nirvana means cessation, that you will cease totally. Who wants to cease totally? Deep down you want to remain, abide. Yes, you can accept that the body will not be there, the body will fall into dust - dust unto dust. But your spirit, your soul WILL be there.

And Buddha says you don't have any soul, because your soul is nothing but a holy name for your old ego. And what is your spirit? - nothing but another facade for the ego to survive. He is very compassionately cruel. He says you will not be there at all.

People used to ask him, "Then why should we meditate? It seems like committing absolute suicide!"

And Buddha said, "Yes, exactly it is that. But peace will be there."

Now the problem becomes even more complicated. You can even become interested in peace; tired of your joys, happiness, unhappiness, sadness, misery, suffering, you can even reluctantly, in a resigned way, agree to attain to peace - but YOU will not be there.

Then another problem arises which is far more significant to you in your sleep: "If I am not there, who is going to experience peace? And what is the point of attaining something if you can't experience it, if you are not there at all?"

And Buddha is absolutely right. He says: If YOU are there, peace cannot be. When you are not there, peace is.

Shakespeare says: To be or not to be is the question. Buddha says: Choose not to be. To be is the problem; not to be means all problems have been transcended, all worries have been transcended.

Buddhists learned that there is something dangerous in Buddha's message; it has to be changed. They changed it. In Tibet, in China, in Japan, they dropped Buddha's words or they gave new meanings to those words. While they were translating Buddhist scriptures into Tibetan, into Chinese, into Japanese, Korean, they made it a point that all negatives should be dropped from Buddha and they should be replaced by positives.

"You will be there in all your glory, in all your grandeur, in all your beauty. You will be there in your purity. Your soul will be there, utterly purified, pure gold. And you will attain to bliss: MAHASUKH - great bliss."

And then, like fire, the religion of Buddha spread all over Asia. It disappeared from the country of its origin for the simple reason that Buddha would not compromise with your sleep; it succeeded all over Asia because the followers compromised. They destroyed the purity of Buddhism; they brought it down to your level. Buddha's effort was to raise you to HIS level, and his followers brought him to your level.

That's what happens always with the followers, because they are also asleep; they are people like you. They are also dreaming like you, they are also desiring like you. There is a certain understanding between you and them. They can understand your dreams because they are their dreams too. Buddha is as far away from them as he is from you.

It is a strange phenomenon, but it has always been so. Christians succeeded when they betrayed Christ and Buddhists succeeded when they betrayed Buddha. You have to betray the master, then you can be a success. When the master starts speaking like sleepy people, then sleepy people become interested; then he is speaking in your language.

The other night, Veet Marco had a dream:

While Jesus Christ was on the cross, three soldiers were playing cards beneath him. At a certain point one of the soldiers got up and pierced Jesus' rib with his spear. Jesus moaned, and the soldier laughingly returned to his seat and continued playing cards.

Soon after a second soldier got up and held a sponge soaked in vinegar up to Jesus' face.

Jesus screamed, "Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?"

The soldier started laughing, then went back to his seat and resumed playing cards.

Suddenly the sky became dark, the earth started to tremble, lights beamed from the north and from the south and a mysterious silence filled the air.

The nails on Jesus' hands and feet started disappearing. The third soldier, seeing this, ran to Jesus' feet and began praying and worshipping God. A terrible wind started blowing and Jesus began to ascend. The soldier hung on to his legs, screaming and crying, "Jesus, Jesus, yours is the power and the glory!"

Jesus' face was filled with light, his hair blowing in the wind, his body donning a white silken robe, ascending up and up into the sky, with the third soldier clinging to his legs, ascending along with him.

The soldier, suddenly realizing what was happening, became frightened and cried up to Jesus, "Jesus, Jesus, where are you going?"

Jesus smilingly replied, "I am going to my father up in the Kingdom of God."

"And how about me?" quizzed the frightened soldier. "Where am I going?"

Jesus, kicking him off, screamed down to the falling figure, "You sonofabitch, you go back to your fucking mother!"

Now, Marco's dream is Marco's dream; it has nothing to do with Jesus. But in your dreams, Jesus will take a form that is really imposed by you, Buddha will take a form that is imposed by you. Rather than allowing them to transform you, you would like to transform them according to YOUR ideas. This has been happening down the ages.

The more desires you have, the more misery you will create for yourself. Misery is a consequence of desiring - and you go on desiring. In fact, you think that if your desires are fulfilled your miseries will disappear. In the first place they are never fulfilled; in the second place, if they are fulfilled, nothing is fulfilled by their fulfillment. You remain as empty as you have always been - or even more, because up to now you were occupied with a certain desire; now even that is fulfilled. A deep deep emptiness comes to you.

You wanted to have a beautiful house; now you have it. Suddenly, you don't know what to do. You were so much engaged in earning money, you were so mad after getting the house; now you have got it. For a moment you feel good - not because of the house, remember, but just because the whole tension, that mounting tension has disappeared - the house is yours. All that strain and tension is relaxed; it is the relaxation of that tension that gives you a little experience of pleasure. That you could have experienced any time if you had relaxed; it has nothing to do with the house.

See the mechanism of desire! But after that relaxation, after a few moments or a few hours or maybe a few days... it depends how intelligent you are. If you are really intelligent, then within seconds that disappears - you can see the futility of it. If you are not that intelligent, then a few hours; if you are really stupid, then a few days. It is in the proportion of your stupidity: you will remain happier for a longer period if you are more stupid because you will not see the point. But sooner or later, howsoever stupid you are, it is bound to disappear. And then you will be left with a great emptiness, hollowness, and you would like again to strive for something else. Maybe you need more money now or a beautiful woman to suit the beautiful house. Again a new desire, and you rush. Again you will attain... and for a few moments, the relaxation.

It is like the sexual experience. What pleasure you attain in sexuality is nothing but the pleasure of a mounting excitement, tension, and then the relaxation. Your energies go on mounting higher and higher and higher, and then you explode - you ejaculate. And suddenly you fall back into a certain calmness; the excitement is gone. But you don't learn anything from it: that this is the whole secret of all your pleasures. Running, rushing, competing, fighting for something creates great tension.

That's why it happens that if you are involved into something really deeply you may not feel any interest in sexuality. If you are involved deep in scientific endeavor you may not be interested in sex at all. You may be a little puzzled, confused: "Why are people so much interested in sex? What is there?" You have found a new sexuality for yourself. Science is your wife; now you are running after science. Or you may be a politician; then politics is your wife. But one day, when you become the prime minister of the country or the president of the country, you have reached to the climax, and then after the climax there is nowhere to go... a certain calm falls over you. That calm is misunderstood as if you have attained it through the experience, by becoming the president, the prime minister, famous, respectable, a Nobel Prize winner. It is not that; it is because of relaxation.

If you relax right now without attaining anything, that same calm will fall over you - even deeper because you will be full of energy. But we never look into anything, and even if we look into anything we conclude very superficially.

I have heard about a man who was passing through a forest, felt his bladder was full, stopped his car, went behind a bush. As he was pissing, a wild bee stung his prick. He screamed - the pain was too much and he did not know what to do.

Then suddenly he remembered, twenty years back when he was just a child it had happened once and his mother had a remedy for it. She had given him a glass of milk and told him to put his prick in the glass, and it had soothed him, calmed him. But where to find the glass of milk? And the pain was excruciating! And tears were coming down from his eyes as he started driving in the hope of finding somebody in the forest.

He was able to find a small hut. He knocked on the door. He was feeling very embarrassed - how to say it and what to say? A woman opened the door, but the pain was so much that he had to say something. So he said, "Please don't ask me why, just give me a glass of milk. I am in terrible pain, I am dying! Just give me a glass of milk and please, don't ask why because I cannot answer it. I am feeling so embarrassed!"

The woman could see the pain of the man. She rushed in, brought a glass of milk.

The man took the glass of milk, rushed towards the back of the house.

The woman was curious, naturally, as to what was happening. She had never seen such a thing before! So she went back just silently so she would not disturb the man. And what she saw... she could not believe her eyes! She said, "My God, I have been married for thirty years, and now I know how you fill up these things! I was always wondering how you fill up these things again and again and again! Now I know!"

Your conclusions are as superficial as that! That poor man is not filling it up! You pass through experiences, but you never go deep into them to find out the truth, what really happens.

You must have made love many times, but have you ever thought about it? - what really happens that gives you calmness, a certain pleasure, a certain joy? Nothing much... just a mounting tension is relaxed. First you go into mounting it higher and higher, and then you fall from that height in a deep deep valley of calmness. But this calmness is available to any meditator without creating any tension.

Hence, meditation takes you beyond sex; nothing else can ever take you beyond sex.

Everything else is a substitute for sex. Somebody is running after money - money is his sex; and somebody is running after power - power is his sex; and somebody is running after something else. Those are all sexualities, substitutes for sex. These people can easily avoid sex because they have found their own new version.

The word 'subdue' has to be rightly understood. It does not mean repression; it means understanding, it means transforming. It means transcendence. It means that you have become master of your own soul, that now nothing dominates you - sex, power, money, nothing dominates you. It does not mean that you have to renounce the world; it simply means that you have to renounce your unawareness.

Desire disappears as you become more and more aware. When awareness is one hundred percent, there is no desire at all. YOUR SORROWS FALL FROM YOU LIKE DROPS OF WATER FROM A LOTUS FLOWER.

Ordinarily, people are not raising their consciousness. On the contrary, they live through conscience, not through consciousness. To live through conscience is to live according to the mob psychology, is to follow the crowd. Conscience is created by the crowd; consciousness is an individual phenomenon - you have to create it. The society won't help you at all; it will hinder you in every possible way. The society does not want conscious people at all. They are rebellious, they are dangerous for the status quo, for the establishment, for the church, for the state, for the nation. They are dangerous because they have gone through a revolution and their very vibe creates revolution in others.

The society lives through conscience. It gives you the idea about what is right and what is wrong: "Do this and don't do that." It goes on giving you commandments. It gives you detailed information about what is right and what is wrong. And in fact that is absolutely absurd, because life goes on changing every day.

What was wrong in the times of Moses is no longer wrong today, and what was right in the days of Krishna is no longer right today. Nobody can give you a detailed map of what is right and what is wrong. In fact, something may be right in the morning and may be wrong in the evening. Next moment it may not be right! Life is a flux, and conscience is a static thing. Consciousness goes on moving with life; it is a flow.

Murphy says: A conscience cannot prevent sin - it only prevents you from enjoying it.

Conscience prevents nothing; it simply prevents you from enjoying your life. You remain the same; you simply become more miserable! That's why your saints have such long long faces, look so serious, sad, dead. Nothing has changed in them: they don't radiate life, they don't radiate love, they don't radiate peace. They only show you what conscience can do. It can kill you, it is a slow poisoning.

Buddha does not believe in conscience; he believes in consciousness. But buddhas talk about consciousness and you always understand conscience. In fact, there are languages like French in which conscience and consciousness are not two words; 'conscience' means both, consciousness and conscience. That's actually the process, how you understand.

A man lost in the woods finally arrived at his destination, The Old Log Inn. On his arrival, however, he was all beaten up, with swollen eyes, bloody nose and mouth.

The alarmed receptionist demanded, "My God, what happened to you?"

The man replied, "I was lost and found a couple making love in the woods, and all I asked was 'How far is The Old Log Inn?'" Please remember, consciousness does not mean conscience. Don't translate it as conscience; it has been translated so for centuries.

And then sorrows fall away from you LIKE DROPS OF WATER FROM A LOTUS FLOWER. So naturally they disappear, they don't leave a trace behind.

The unconscious man is a helpless victim of circumstances; he is accidental. He has no intrinsic value yet because he has not created any inner light yet. Only with consciousness you have intrinsic value; otherwise your life is just accidental.

When a child was born in Bethlehem, three kings came bearing gifts for him in the stable where he lay.

The first king came forward, putting down his gift of frankincense and myrrh before the cradle. The second king set down his gift of a large bar of gold. The third king advanced with his gift, but tripped over the bar of gold.

"Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed.

The father of the child looked up at him and said, "That's a good name! We were thinking of calling him Fred."

Your names, your lives, your everything is accidental. Consciousness will make you go beyond accidents.

Remember: there is no other revolution except consciousness. It cuts the desires from the very roots and it brings freedom to you.

Enough for today.

The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 9